Treehouse
by esotaria
Summary: Ne, Ishidakun. We should build a treehouse when we get back. Written for BleachExchange's miniValentine's Day exchange. And a total ripoff of I Don't Want to be the Rain, sadly. I'm too young to be hacking my own work!


The nights in the Soul Society were surprisingly peaceful. Ishida felt a strange sense of calm as he looked out the window of their latest hiding place, staring up at the stars that looked so familiar and yet were not the ones of his boyhood. You weren't supposed to feel like this in the middle of enemy territory, with hundreds of powerful enemies scouring the area, looking for you. Rest was supposed to be the last thing on your mind in such a situation.

He glanced over at Orihime, who lay curled up on his cape nearby, having agreed to go to sleep first on the condition that he would wake her up the second he got even a little bit sleepy, and he felt grateful that things weren't the way they should be. He turned his eyes back to the window and the stars glittering above, keeping his senses alert for enemies even as he let his mind drift back into dreaming.

"Ne, Ishida-kun?" 

"Hn?" Ishida turned back to the girl, wondering if she had gotten cold or somehow felt uncomfortable. A part of him hoped that she _was_ cold, and would not mind him wrapping his arm around her shoulders; solely for the purpose of keeping her warm, of course.

"We should build a treehouse when we get back."

Ishida blinked once, and then again.

"...a _treehouse_?" he asked, and watched as Orihime rolled over and propped her head on her hand, looking at him with disconcertingly earnest eyes.

"A treehouse!" she said, nodding as best she could.

"...why?" Ishida was, frankly, baffled by this sudden flight of whimsy.

"Because we're a team of superheroes!" Orihime said, as if the answer had been obvious. "Every superhero team needs their base! And just using a normal old house isn't any fun, unless it was a big spooky haunted mansion or something, but there aren't many big spooky haunted mansions in our neighborhood and besides, we're super_heroes_, not super_villains_! We need someplace bright and shiny to stay! So we need to build a treehouse, with a rope ladder that we can drop down for people to come up, except Kurosaki-kun because he's really good at jumping so he could probably just jump up, and we could have bookcases of books and maps and a secret radar device for detecting Hollows and –"

"Kurosaki?" Ishida stiffened at the mention of his rival. "Hmph. I'm not a part of any team that _Kurosaki_ is in. I'm here to help save Kuchiki-san for my own reasons, not to help him." Ishida regretted his words as he saw Orihime wilt just slightly, but he could hardly take them back. He hated Kurosaki Ichigo, and nothing Orihime could do or say could change that.

"But Ishida-kun!" Orihime protested, sitting up. "We can't be a superhero team without you! You're the brains!"

"Oh?" Ishida raised an eyebrow, curious in spite of himself. Orihime nodded energetically, enthused by his attention.

"Yes!" she said. "And Kurosaki-kun is the brawn! Well, he's the reckless lead hero. And Sado-kun is the stoic, kind-hearted brawn, and Kuchiki-san is the superlady and..." Whatever she was about to say died on her lips; instead of finishing her sentence, she smiled at Ishida. "So you _have_ to be a part of the team!" she said quietly. "The group can't function without you!"

Ishida noticed one glaring omission.

"And what about you, Inoue-san?" he asked.

"Me?" Orihime seemed surprised by the inclusion. "I'm...the fangirl, I guess." She grinned wryly. "Or maybe the mascot! No, I wouldn't make a good mascot. The mascot would have to symbolize the entire group! It would have to be... a strawberry colored bunny with a bow and arrow! And a sombrero!" She looked incredibly pleased with this feat of creativity, but Ishida wasn't fooled.

"Is that really all you think you are, Inoue-san?" he asked quietly. Orihime shrugged, quickly turning her head away, out of Ishida's sight. The Quincy felt a pang of sadness, which he covered up with brusque confusion. "Then why do you care so much about building a headquarters?" he asked.

"Because all superheroes need headquarters!" Orihime said defensively. "I'm just being a concerned citizen!" She tried to hold Ishida's gaze, but his eyes knew too much. Sighing, she flomped onto her back, her head pillow by her hands.

"I could be the secretary," she said, and Ishida got the feeling she was dancing around the issue again. As honest as Orihime appeared to be, Ishida had noticed she had a habit of speaking in riddles and metaphor. Her weird imagination was a great device for hiding how she really felt. "I could keep records, and make appointments, and keep the treehouse orderly while you and Kurosaki-kun and Sado-kun and Kuchiki-san fought evil. And Tatsuki-chan could help! Somehow. And we would all be just one big happy team."

Ishida held back a derisive snort at the idea of him and Ichigo ever being a "happy team." 

"I don't see how it really matters," he said, leaning back to rest against the wall. "You're all friends already, right?" Ishida could hardly call the group his friends, save for perhaps Orihime, but as far as he could tell Orihime was close to all of them. Orihime was close to everybody. She was this blazing little star with the world as her orbit, and everything in it revolving around her.

Orihime let out a little sigh that Ishida was quite sure he wasn't supposed to hear.

"Have you ever been to the beach, Ishida-kun?" she asked, making Ishida once again blink in surprise. _What does this have to do with anything?_

"...yes," he answered slowly. 

Orihime rolled over onto her stomach, turning herself so that she could face him. Her expression was pensive.

"My brother used to take me to the sea," she said. "And he would take me on these boat trips where we could meet the fishes. I would watch the fishes swim, so happy in their own little universe, and I asked my brother if I could jump down and join them. But he said no, because the fishes had their own place in the world, and I had mine, and the two could never really mix."

Ishida knew this had to have _something_ to do with Kurosaki and the others. Others may have passed it off as one of Orihime's random topic jumps, but Ishida had been watching her too closely for too long to believe that.

"Sometimes I still think that he was wrong," she continued quietly. "Technology has gotten so advanced, there has to be _some_ way to build undersea houses so we can live and swim with the fishes. But most of the time it seems like he's right. I can dive down for a little bit and play, but pretty soon I have to come up for air again. I can never really be a part of the fishes."

Understanding tickled at the edge of Ishida's mind, tantalizing him, but it never came to the fore. Orihime's meaning continued to elude him. Still, he couldn't just say _nothing_. He couldn't just leave Orihime in the strange, needy mood she was in.

"I have some pretty nice trees in my yard," he said, glancing away, feeling slightly embarrassed. "I'm sure one of them would work well for a treehouse." 

"Really?" Orihime's voice was excited, but there was something off about it. Ishida turned his head to see what the problem was and found the girl staring at him searchingly. He flushed and began fidgeting self-consciously. _Did I say something wrong?_ he wondered.

And then she smiled. It was small; it was soft; but suddenly the world was a different place.

"I'll have to take a look at it when we get home!" she said, her voice too quiet to really be excited, but cheerful nonetheless. "And the others will too. We'll need to pick the _perfect_ tree!" Saying that, she let out a loud, jaw-popping yawn.

"Go to sleep, Inoue-san," Ishida told the girl gently, and Orihime wrinkled her nose at him.

"I'm not sleepy!" she protested, sounding like a five year old. Ishida gave her the look his grandfather had always given him when he had fought against going to bed, and Orihime giggled abashedly. "All right," she said. "Good night, Ishida-kun. Wake me up the moment you get sleepy!"

"Aa," Ishida said, watching as the girl rolled back into her original position, her back towards him. He watched her muscles slowly relax, her breathing even out, as she finally fell asleep, and then he returned his gaze to the stars outside, once again assuming watch.


End file.
